Personally, I’m not a fan at all. Like all sales taxes, it’s regressive – because poorer people spend more of their cash at retail, this hits them harder. Not only that, it’s a patronizing, paternalistic “vice” tax. I don’t mind taxing cigarettes, which are genuinely addictive. And booze – well, you can’t fight booze taxes. But expanding this sort of district-knows-best nonsense to soda is absurd. I’m a grown man, damnit – I know that soda is bad for me, and I’ll drink it or not as I choose.
As for “protecting the kiddies” from Big Soda – that’s what parenting is for, and I don’t see why I should have to pay one red cent because parents can’t be bothered to haul little Jane or Jimmy’s rear off the couch and onto a bicycle.
I should also point out, for those who actually care, that this tax may have perverse environmental consequences. Since the tax is levied per ounce, the tax on a two-liter bottle of soda, which might normally hover around $1-2, will be a whopping $0.60+ - it’d probably average around a third the cost of the bottle. A twenty-ounce bottle, on the other hand, would only be taxed twenty cents. This tax makes it more attractive to buy more, smaller bottles of soda - and thus generate more plastic waste.
I think it’s dumb. Diet sodas are “sugary drinks”? There’s no sugar in them!
In general I’m opposed to vice taxes, e.g. on alcohol. You’re right, they’re regressive. Next it’ll be sugary snacks, then processed foods, etc. – all affecting the poor far more but doing nothing to actually combat obesity. Nobody is going to go, “Well, I have to pay a bit extra for all sodas, energy drinks, and sweetened teas – guess I’ll stick to just water and milk from now on!”
If you’re dumb enough to give your kid nothing but Mountain Dew, what are the odds that you are a sensible budgeter?
I’m against any sort of vice taxes for many of the same reasons as the OP, that I would prefer to choose to partake or not in an activity without the government’s interference. However, my main concern is that I believe the point of taxes is to raise money, and that it is unethical to use it as a tool for social engineering.
I do disagree with the OP that it will necessarily encourage people to buy smaller bottles more often. Yes, the relative price of a 2L bottle will go up some, but it should still be cheaper than a 20oz bottle.
I wonder what this will do to free refills at restaurants. Would this make that cost prohibitive? It could have a pretty negative impact on a lot of businesses because of that. It may also lead to more people just buying sodas outside the city. Considering DC is pretty small, it’s not really unfeasible to imagine that a signficant portion of people could easily bring in soda from Maryland or Virginia.
I probably overstated the point about the tax encouraging people to buy more small bottles, but I do think there’s something to it. Even if the two-liter bottles remain somewhat cheaper than the 20-ounce bottles, the price difference may shrink enough that it doesn’t effectively discourage people from buying the smaller bottles. After all, the smaller bottles have real advantages - you can easily drink directly from them if you wish, and they fit in a lunch bag.
The thing about people buying soda outside of the city is that this is a solution that only really works for pretty well-off people. If you’re a middle-class person who can afford a car and the leisure time to do this, you can drive out to Costco in Virginia, load up on low-tax soda, and come out a winner. But lower-income individuals who aren’t very close to the border can’t practically do this. They’re stuck with the DC tax.
And this is the heart of the matter. A whole lot of what happens in DC government - and in a lot of governments, for that matter - is an attempt to correct the problems caused by the deficient life skills of poorly-educated people. And that can’t work. Uneducated people will make tend to make poor choices, because they simply don’t know any better - and if you ban one bad choice, they’ll either get mad and find a way to make that choice anyway, or make other equally bad choices.
How about what’s going on in Santa Clara County (where I live) in Silicon Valley. The supervisors passed a new law this week banning restaurants from giving out free toys unless the food the toy is tied to is “healthy”. After all, parents are simply incapable of controlling what their children order at Mickey-Ds.
I’m flattered, but perhaps you shouldn’t hand me a light-saber and introduce me to Yoda quite yet.
You see, my solution to the problem of uneducated people making stupid choices is to educate people - massive increases in taxpayer funding of public schools, expanded Pell grants and new low-interest loan programs for post-secondary education. I don’t believe the state can do a good job of telling people how to live their lives (with some exceptions) - but I do believe the state can help people equip themselves to figure out how to lead good lives.
Somehow, I suspect that my “put way more money into public schools and public-school-teacher salaries” approach to most aspects of the Poverty Problem would keep me pretty firmly in the liberal camp.
ETA: By the way, the role of education in good maternal decision-making has been pretty much universally accepted in international development work for a while now. It’s practically a truism that if you want to improve maternal, infant, and child health, you need to give women the intellectual skills to seek out resources, whether they’re healthy cooking ingredients or government aid programs. This means education. Education empowers people.
Heh. If I were a restaurant proprietor in Santa Clara, I’d switch out the Happy Meal gifts from toys to children’s non-fiction books, then challenge the law on First Amendment free speech grounds. It’d be a hell of a stretch, but it’d be fun making the county supervisors sweat. If I weren’t an atheist, I’d make the free books prayer tracts and throw in a freedom of religion issue for giggles.
Hmmm. Anecdotally speaking, of course, my own experience doesn’t validate that thesis. The only time I drank a lot of soda was while I was attending college.
Sure, but you knew it was bad for you. You made an informed choice, just as I did - that soda is tasty, and the health impact is in the Distant Future, so to heck with it. But I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t let your young kid drink a lot of soda, right? And if your doctor told you the soda was doing active harm to your system, you’d cut it out right quick.
Education doesn’t make people saints - but it makes them savvier sinners, and that’s worth doing.
In addition to all the other problems mentioned so far, it should also be noted that the tax does not apply to bottled fruit drinks such as Naked Juice and Odwalla. These drinks contain a lot more sugar per serving than Coke or Pepsi. So the tax is actually putting financial pressure in favor of the more sugary drinks. (Not that I think it will make a difference. I agree that there will be no significant change in drinking habits.)
Well, according to the OP’s link, the money from the tax would go to local schools, “providing more affordable, healthier meals to students, establish farm to table programs, and fund wellness and physical fitness programs.”
You can’t be a functioning member of our society and not have a pretty good idea of what is healthy and what is not. On this issue, I don’t see the benefits of education. Forcing people to sit through nutrition classes in school is just as bad, in my book, as forcing them to pay more taxes on healthy foods.
Actually, this is an approach that, although undeniably liberal, I could get behind.
I believe that, as the give-a-fish/teach-to-fish adage holds, we perpetuate poverty by giving handouts. If we could effectively educate, with vocational training as well as more classical training, we at least have a shot at breaking that cycle.
If there’s going to be massive government spending, this is an area I wouldn’t flinch over.
I would probably be inclined to get annoyed by a tax on non-diet sodas if we didn’t subsidize the HFCS industry so heavily. In effect, right now, I have to subsidize unhealthy behavior which doesn’t seem any more outrageous to me than penalizing unhealthy behavior.
But what do you do when people have been given all of the available information on the topic at hand, have been educated in all of the benefits and consequences of the issue, have been given ample opportunity for extended discussion and contemplation of all this information, and then make what you believe is the wrong choice?
Sooner or later, in any discussion of how education is the solution to this, that, or another social problem, this question has to be grappled with. Almost inevitably, the answer is not, “OK, that’s their choice,” but instead, “well, then we’ll have to do something.” The exact dimensions of “something” are almost never spelled out, but the implication is that the decision will have to be made for them, and imposed upon them. Forcibly, if necessary.
I am very skeptical of “education is the solution” arguments.
I don’t have a problem with sin taxes in general, but that particular proposed tax seems over-specific; what’s the rationale behind taxing soda, but not all sugary food and drinks?
I say this with as much respect to my fellow DCers as possible, but the assumption that DC is chock-full of fully functioning members of society who are knowledgeable about things like nutrition, basic business etiquette, or even literacy, is not a valid assumption.
There was a study done a few years ago that found that roughly 12% of US adults are functionally illiterate. More than a third of adults in DC are functionally illiterate. Think about that: for all the lawyers and bureaucrats here, to have a third of the population be functionally illiterate is just astounding.
Another data point: a friend of mine works with various employment programs in the city. Very basic business skills like show up on time, call if you can’t work due to illness, don’t swear at your boss, wear decent clothes for an interview, etc. are continual problems.
If these are the problems that are prevalent among DC’s adults, what do you expect they are teaching their children about nutrition?
